He said: “The biggest and most significant indicator of whether or not someone will get a bonus this year is whether or not they got one last year. The longer that goes on, the more people come to rely on the money and the harder it is to stop paying it.

“In those circumstances, employers really should think about whether or not it would be better to address the level of basic pay, rather than finding spurious reasons to add on an arbitrary annual bonus that has little basis in performance.”

“This unacceptable discrepancy between pay and performance is even more widespread among the ranks of senior managers. Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot easier to reward poor performance than to face the awkwardness of having difficult conversations with underperforming staff.”

Francke said that to reform this culture, employers must first tackle CEO pay, plus provide managers with clear targets and explain how they will be measured against them.

The survey also found that the number of employers experiencing problems recruiting new staff has risen significantly in the past year; almost nine in 10 said they had difficulty recruiting in 2015, compared with 79% in 2014. The main reasons given were finding people with specific skills and a shortage of quality applicants.